Conference Agenda

The enterprise of international law, in both its classical and modern forms were, in essence, an enterprise to expand and entrench the hegemonical narrative. One cannot divorce the conceptualisation and understanding of the authoritative institution from its colonial history. Insofar as the present available literature has provided conceptualisations on how the European colonial powers have structured global governance, this dissertation attempts to be an aperture through which the hermeneutics of the traditions of the Eurologocentrism – that is, the logic of Western European thought, which includes a Greco-Roman and the JudeoChristian tradition – and international law intersect. In this dissertation, I problematise the conceptual framework of modern international law in examining the normative vocabularies which gives structure to the law of nations. A major contention of this dissertation is that prior examinations have obscured important, if not necessary, factors which are relevant to producing alternative approaches to the discipline. In neglecting the historiographies and genealogy of thought, one inadvertently succumbs to the essentialist representations of Western Europe and the Orient. By employing a deconstructive hermeneutical genealogy approach, I provincialize the colonial historiography to invert the continuous narratives and demonstrate the diverse conditions in which imperial settings had operated and continues to persist. Given the historical context, a fundamental element to be found in Eurologocentrism is a Judeo-Christian tradition. In my attempt at reconciling the body of international law with the Sinosphere, I will elucidate many parallels between ancient China and early modern Europe. Hence, contrary to mainstream scholarly perspectives, I contend that a reconciliation with the Sinosphere is feasible. I conclude with policy recommendations to generalise the international legal body to even wider applicability.

How can we comprehend and make sense of the epistemic space and ‘grey zone’ between the traditional understandings of the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ through relational approaches? Various concepts have emerged in the last years to frame post-soviet lived experiences – Eurasia, Global East, Central- and Eastern Europe, Transperipheral –, but so far none of them seem to be widely accepted. Why is it so particularly difficult/challenging to address this epistemic 'grey space'? How can we explore and understand the spaces opened by the sudden rupture caused by the fall of the Soviet world? This chapter examines the challenges of addressing the legacy left by the disintegration of the former Second World through a relational approach to imperiality within postcolonial and decolonial contexts. It explores the temporal, spatial, and epistemic dimensions of understanding the former ‘Second World’, focusing on the potential links between (post)socialist, (post)communist, and (post)colonial perspectives. By situating these approaches within the concepts of global easts and imperiality, it highlights the ways coloniality and imperiality are interconnected through mutual influences and reciprocal dynamics, revealing how they shape contemporary identities, knowledge systems, and geopolitical relations. As a main contribution, the chapter discusses how a relational contextualisation of imperiality and an epistemology of global easts can contribute to and deepen decolonial and deimperial thought and praxis, enriching our understanding of a shared global history that continues to inform current structures of power.

The status of coloniality in EU-Africa relations is curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, scholars and even some practitioners increasingly agree on the persistent vestiges of colonial logics in this contentious intercontinental relationship. On the other hand, diplomats and practitioners persistently commit to the idea of an ‘equal partnership’ in a world full of shared challenges. Coloniality survived colonisation: While the more crass and visible forms of Western colonialism in Africa may have become marginalised, this paper focuses on one of the more elusive persevering dynamics of coloniality, with a focus on direct funding and financial market-based financing in the EU-Africa relationship.

This paper theorises the coloniality of money in EU-Africa relations. We focus on how colonial legacies shape power dynamics, decision-making processes, and institutional practices, employing a decolonial lens centred on the ‘coloniality of power’. We scrutinise how EU institutions operate on and reproduce Eurocentric logics of political action, despite a seasonable EU rhetoric simultaneously advocating for equity and geopolitical pragmatism. We demonstrate how a culture of European superiority dominates the EU-Africa relationship, how knowledge production in the partnership favours Eurocentric outcomes, and how hierarchies are in-built into the governance of funding instruments. In so doing, we illustrate how Eurocentric political practices legitimise EU policy and perpetuate racial and economic hierarchies through money-based partnerships. We identify two effects of the coloniality of money: continuity in disguise of reform and marginalised African agency.

The paper innovatively combines critical theory on decolonization with an empirically informed analysis of three aspects of EU-Africa relations: institutions and institutional constellations, rules and standards, as well as diplomatic and bureaucratic practices. Our three case studies include the (1) European Investment Bank (EIB), (2) the European Development Fund (EDF) and its successor instrument Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI), and (3) the European Peace Facility’s (EPF) Assistance Measures. By combining detailed empirical case studies with a close re-reading of debates on coloniality and decolonization, we argue that understanding the interplay of money, power, and coloniality is vital. It not only underscores the historicity of EU-Africa relations but also reveals the pernicious obstacles to improved intercontinental cooperation today. We suggest that genuine decolonization requires more than superficial changes: a fundamental shift in the power dynamics of money-based partnerships such as the EU-Africa relationship, and caution against the unintended effects of shallow decolonization in EU-Africa relations.

Europeanisation is one of the key concepts in European Studies. Yet, it has been quite uncritically applied with the assumption that Western European policies are the golden standard towards which other states should move, especially from an enlargement perspective. This paper contributes to the efforts to decolonise the European Union’s (EU) external policy by operationalising the concept of Europeanisation from a post-colonial perspective and by applying it to the foreign policies of Central European states towards Africa as a case study. The paper starts by elaborating a general framework for a critical evaluation of Europeanisation processes from a decolonial perspective by combining the modified three elements of the EU’s ‘mixed strategy’ to deal with its colonial past (amnesia, atonement and avoidance) with the mainstream understanding of Europeanization as a three-directional model of mutual influences (download, upload, crossload). This novel framework is applied to Central Europe’s foreign policies towards Africa. The post-communist governments now tend to self-identify as a part of the West, yet without sharing the guilt of the former colonial powers and its consequences. Despite their different histories, however, both share amnesia and redirecting as the dominant modes of dealing with their (anti-)colonial pasts: Central Europe has mainly discarded its involvement in the anti-colonial struggle of Africa, and at the same time, it uploads its imagined colonial innocence to the EU level by defending the ‘Fortress Europe’. The deliberation of the ‘unity in diversity’ of the EU’s (anti‑)colonial past and a recognition of its inherent ambiguity is a necessary condition for the EU to reconstruct and implement a common foreign policy that aspires to establish a ‘partnership of equals’ with the global South and Africa particularly. Overall, this paper aims to contribute to Critical European Studies and (Critical) Post-Colonial Studies by directly linking decolonial approaches to the power relations of the EU not only with the global South but also within the EU.